The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker has always been a very exciting tournament series for me, one I look forward to a lot every year, so it was nice to exchange beautiful, sunny Ibiza beaches and parties for something just as fun for me: grinding the WCOOP from a raining and grey Amsterdam.

Although I only slept for two hours the night before, and still had the Swedish house mafia beats from the club in my head, I was eager to finally start grinding WCOOP. I decided to late register for the $320 mixed hold'em event. I started out my poker career playing limit hold'em in the casino and later online. What a lot of people these days can't imagine is that there used to be days where there were more limit hold'em games then no limit games. Lots has changed!

The $320 mixed started great for me and, right off the bat, I was crushing it! I was running and playing great. Also I was really lucky with my table draws as I had players who would not mind me running over the table.

I would play pretty tight in no limit hold'em, but in the limit hold'em parts of the tournament I would play like a real animal, raising pretty much every hand I could to steal a lot of chips.
It wasn't until the final table where I really found some well known players such as Shaun Deeb and Gboro780. I started the final table with the chip lead and never looked back. It was an amazing feeling to finally win a WCOOP event after playing them for many years, and if I wasn't already so excited to play for a bracelet, I am even more determined now after tasting victory!

Two days later I came close again when I made the final table of the $530 Omaha Hi Lo tourney. At one point on the final table I was chip leader but in the end, after a few beats and ever-increasing blinds, I had to settle for 6th place.

At least I have another week of WCOOP to win a bracelet for my other wrist. Let's go!

Follow Noah on twitter @NoahBoeken
Follow Noah on Facebook

I personally love everything about the WCOOP; all the different tournaments, the great structures, the huge guarantee prize pools and chasing both a bracelet and the overall leader board. The leader board has some great prizes attached to it which offers tremendous value in playing as many events as possible. The best part of all is I can dedicate myself to the series all from the comfort of my own home. I couldn't ask for anything more.

Last year I cashed in 8 WCOOP events with my best result being a 7th place finish in the $10K 8 Game High Roller. As much as I was content with my results especially since I showed a profit for the series I still was missing that bracelet title. So this year I was hoping to improve on last year's success and finally capture that elusive title. With the first half of the series completed; it's been again a little bittersweet. Having played 20 of the first 28 events, I have 3 cashes. The first was a min cash in Event 3($200 NL), the second a 25th place finish in Event 27 ($320 Badugi) and the other cash, was yet another close call, a 3rd place finish in Event 9 ($1050 NL) for a massive score of $117,555! That event as expected had a super tough and talented field that saw 65 of the 1237 entrants return for day 2. I came into day 2 with a below average chip stack but quickly doubled up and then some to put myself with the leaders for the rest of the day. I entered the final table second in chips to "extasyman". The final table was pretty deep stacked and we played 7 handed for over 90 minutes before eliminating any player. It was at this point of the tournament where I really felt I was going to win the event as I pulled close to 3 million in chips, a clear million ahead of 2nd place. It just wasn't meant to be; I say it was bittersweet because as much as I long for that title I also feel very fortunate to take down close to $120K for my efforts and guarantee myself a nice profit for the WCOOP series even if I don't cash in another event. The winner of the event was "extasyman" who actually played fearlessly and aggressively to take down the title.

Since my 3rd place finish last week I have come to realize just how big the WCOOP has become. While playing at the tables I can't tell you how many people have congratulated me on my finish in the observer chat. It is simply humbling and I thank everyone for their support.

All is not lost; with still another 30 plus events to go. I'm actually excited about the second half of the schedule. I feel great about my game and have added confidence after the close finish. I'm hungrier than ever for that bracelet, and frankly they are the events that I was eyeing since the schedule was first announced. Event 36 $530 Omaha 8/B on the 16th ,Event 56 $1050 Limit Hold'em on the 23rd, Event 59 $2100 HORSE on the 24th , Event 61 $10,300 8 Game on the 25th and obviously the grand daddy of the WCOOP the "The Main Event" $5200 NL also on September 25th.

To get caught up on the entire WCOOP news visit www.pokerstars.com/wcoop , where you will find news, videos, blogs, results, current leader board and schedule of events. Or you could do what I do and listen to Radio-WCOOP daily at 3:30 ET. This show is the nuts with hosts Joe Stapleton, Nick Wealthall and Matt Broughton. They are a blast plus they give away lots of free stuff and always have great guests on the show. On September 19th I'll be on the show as a guest. So tune into that show and send in your questions and I'll be more than happy to answer them. I will be posting WCOOP updates on Twitter on my @PatPezzin account.

As for my plans after WCOOP, I'll be heading to London for the EPT, and then I'm off to Brazil for the World Bocce Championships where I will be representing Canada! Go Canada Go!

See you at the tables!

After a quiet summer without a lot of card games, I am again getting ready to battle for the titles. I was considering going to WSOP, but chose again to stay home. I have found I really enjoy the nice Norwegian summer, and there are enough opportunities to go abroad and play live at other times of the year.

The Spring Championship of Online Poker, SCOOP, was a huge success for me, with four final tables, including one tournament win, and the Player of the Series award. I have now set my sight on the next big event, the World Championship of Online Poker. For three weeks in September, almost every day and night, Donald will be chasing bracelets and leaderboards.

Most players are attracted by the NL-hold'em events, with their huge fields and prize pools. While I will certainly play those tournaments, I strongly prefer the other games. In limit games, like Omaha High/Low, Horse and Triple Draw, I do feel I have some edge on most of the players. The situations and decisions in a limit game are for some reason more interesting and appealing to me than the live or die decisions of no-limit. And the smaller playing fields makes it easier to reach the final table, which is also a motivating factor.

The biggest challenge for me during WCOOP is to stay sharp and awake for as many tournaments as possible. Most days have three tournaments, with the last starting up to eight hours after the first. So, it may be a good idea to fully use the three-hour late registration some of the days. I also expect to put in some rest days, to recuperate after long and strenuous sessions.

WCOOP has its own home page, with lots of statistics and other information. As a stats freak, I am greatly motivated by those pages, and will closely follow the movements on the lists. One goal of the WCOOP is to overtake my friend Thor Hansen (osten) on the list of all time number of cashes. Another is of course to fight for the top ranks of the WCOOP leaderboard. There are substantial prizes to the top three, and I expect last year's winner, Andy McLEOD, will also join the fight.

WCOOP is a great opportunity to play with the best, and to have a shot at a bracelet. So even if you dont have the opportunity to play that many events, I hope you will set aside time and money for your favorite tournament, or try to satellite into it.

I wish you all good luck and hope to see you during WCOOP.

For me it is my first WCOOP where I'm going to play more events as well, as until last year I was spending much more time playing live, rather than online. Now I am still discovering the world of online poker and for the future that means quite a big challenge for me. In WCOOP 2011 I am planning to play more than 15 events. Of course mostly NLHE full ring, I will also play one or two heads-up tournaments but I am looking forward to the 2-7 Triple Draw and Omaha tournaments as well. Especially 2-7 Triple Draw NL is a discipline which I like very much. It is a nice chance to try other variants of poker within a nice field. Of course the chance to win much more than usual is great as well. But you know, a bracelet is a bracelet. Of course to play EPT London or PCA is something totally different because you play with live tells, live atmosphere, but WCOOP tournaments are very special too and are a great opportunity for everyone to play with the best players in the world from your own home, without the need to spend 13 hours in the plane, or thousands of dollars on the trip expenses. And of course you can celebrate your bracelet with your best friends' immediately after heads-up and they can follow you online until the last winning hand!

My tips for WCOOP first timers is manage your bankroll and to choose the tournaments in your strongest variants or in variants you want to practice pretty well. Great opportunity is to try something new for few hundreds of USD. Of course for European players, it is now good that USD are "quite cheap" so we can play more tournaments for less money :)) Discipline and patience are very important as well and one of the keys is set-up the best strategy for different levels of the tournaments, stacks, position etc. I look forward to meeting my friends behind the virtual table too. Of course I am ready to do all my best and I will do. I hope that at the end I going to bring my first bracelet to Bratislava, the capital of Slovak Republic :)

Follow Dag on Twitter: @dagplovic

What I like about the PokerStars WCOOP series, as well as SCOOP, are those rare high stakes online tournaments. You don't get to play them many times a year and they are always a thrill. I did good in last year's WCOOP $10,000 high roller and finished second, netting over $400,000. I like to think I play better poker when the pain of losing is there. That's when your mind is really in the game.

For this year's WCOOP I will be playing most of the higher buy-in tournaments and some smaller ones, too. I'm usually multi-tabling since I play cash games at the same time.

I can understand some people losing focus when multi-tabling, but that's not the case with me. Multi-tabling helps me to stay more patient. My number one problem in poker is curiosity. I like to play hands and see flops. And if I play only one or two tables I'm in a constant danger of starting to play way too loose.

From the Team PokerStars Pros, my picks for this year's WCOOP bracelet success are Eugene Katchalov, Pat Pezzin and JP Kelly. They are great players and have stamina to grind through the whole series. They are also solid all-around players who can play all poker variants. I will put my bets on them.

Visit the official PokerStars WCOOP site to see the full tournament schedule, as well as details of how you can qualify for much less than the tournament buy-in.

Good luck!

Ville Wahlbeck is a member of Team PokerStars Pro from Finland.

However, to win one of these events, or even making a final table, takes great skill and also a high level of stamina as the tournaments can go on for a very long time. Last year I cashed a lot but found myself failing at the key stages of the events. This year I am going to try and do a number of things to give myself the best chance of winning a highly sought after WCOOP bracelet.

Firstly, I will try to do a fair amount of exercise before hand as this will help with the stamina
issue and hopefully keep the brain active when others are flagging. Together with this trying to maintain a correct sleeping pattern is essential, which means in the UK going to sleep very late and waking up very late.

In terms of actual poker playing I think I need to do some research on who the new faces are in the online tournament (MTT) scene as I have not played as many online tournaments (MTTs) in the past few months as maybe I should have, so to close the gap on these guys I need to be better prepared.

Have fun as it is a great time of year, personally I am most looking forward to the $2,100 6 max PLO event and the $5,200 main event. Good luck for the series.

In the past we have seen many champions like 'Jovial Gent' arise from such series, and become overnight idols on the virtual felt. The WCOOP offers tournaments from 6 max, high rollers, shoot out to turbos, and guaranteed prize pool of $300,000 to $10 Million.

Most poker players nowadays are pretty used to tournament structures, blind levels and antes. The strategy for multi-table tournaments differs depending on your opponents. If your table is limping a lot, you might want to adopt a more aggressive play and isolate pots where you can get it heads up. If players are relatively tight on your table, you might want to see cheap flops and try to set mine and bust players with over pairs.

When the blinds and antes get high, pick your spots to steal blinds constantly, keep putting pressure on short stacks and try a squeeze play if the situation is appropriate. A lucky few may find themselves in short-handed situations on the final table and maybe even heads up play. Most tournament players lack in short-handed and heads-up play because it doesn't happen very often.

WCOOP 2010 will offer everyone a great chance to brush up on multi-table tournament skills, win big and play with Team PokerStars Pros from all over the world. I wish you all the best of luck and may the best win! See you all on the virtual felt.

For me personally, the start of the WCOOP brings back some amazing memories. Back in 2008, when I was too young to even play live in the US, I managed to beat a field of over 3,000 players to win my very own bracelet and over $135,000. A great night and something to always remember. This year I hope to be able to final table another event, hopefully even the WCOOP Main Event which has a staggering $10 million guaranteed price pool, but there are countless tournaments in the schedule that I am excited about.

If the buy-ins are a bit too high for you to buy-in directly, I would recommend trying your luck in the cash and FPP satellites as the WCOOP is your chance to play with the best, or maybe even prove you are the best!

Looking forward to see you at the tables, and check out more on the official WCOOP site.

For the pro's it's different. Players like me invest large amounts in the WCOOP and we have to make at least one final table to break even. Amateurs, on the other hand, are extremely happy when they make a final table because the money is so huge.

That's the beauty of the WCOOP; pros and amateurs competing together to win the biggest prizes in online poker. The first prize is often more than $100,000 and sometimes more than a $250,000. On the other hand, WCOOP one of toughest series of the year because the fields are so big. More often than not you have no idea who you are playing against but when you get deeper in a tournament the edge of the pros is pretty big. And that's because of our preparations.

WCOOP tournaments will run easily for more than 12 hours and every players needs to be focused the whole time. Everybody gets tired after a 12-hour session and it's just how you handle the pressure while you're exhausted. For amateurs it's tougher to play sessions that long because they simply aren't used to the amount of pressure and the huge prizes. Also, they are more tired than us pros and that's where we have the biggest edge in the WCOOP. That's also one of the reasons that you see a lot of pros at the final tables.

I always try to start fresh at a big tournament. Obviously my goal is to win a tournament and I think you have more chance to win a big tournament when you live a healthy lifestyle. Before I played in the World Series of Poker I already changed my lifestyle. I work out regularly and I make sure I don't eat too much fast food or other food that contains too much fat. I also eat a lot of vegetables. Besides food it's also important to get enough sleep during a tournament series.

I stayed at Palms Place for the last two years during the WSOP and it's perfect for poker players like me. You can get enough rest and you are not living in a casino the whole day. It helps you to focus more on your game and my healthy lifestyle is one of the reasons I have cashed three times in a row in the WSOP Main Event.

For the WCOOP I also try to change my rhythm a little bit. I sleep in the morning or afternoon and I play at night because the WCOOP is mostly during the night. With this rhythm I narrow the edge on the American players who have a big advantage because of the better time zone.

Personally I can't wait 'till the WCOOP starts. I have a couple of nice cashes in the NLHE tournaments and my biggest result is a 2nd place in the $320 single rebuy WCOOP 2nd chance in 2008. I really want to break my personal record and I am ready to put a win on my resume. I still don't have a bracelet around my arm and after a WSOP bracelet, the WCOOP bracelet is the goal of every poker player.

The best tournaments in my eyes are the two-day tournaments. You start with a lot of the chips and the blind structure is so good that it will give us lots of play during the whole tournament. I always feel good in these deepstack tournaments and I am really looking forward to playing in those events. During SCOOP I made Day 2 of the $2,100 NLHE event but unfortunately I came short in 36th place.

Last but not least I want to recommend the satellites to the WCOOP main events. A satellite is ideal because most of the time you can enter a Main Event for less money than the regular buy-in. I played a lot of satellites for bigger events in the past and the money you save with satellites is the first money you win. Satellites are running now and you can find them in the PokerStars Lobby under Events >>WCOOP, or by visiting the official WCOOP site.

Good luck, and I hope to see you at the tables.

While I have had some deep runs in a number of WCOOP events in previous years, I have not yet had the privilege of winning one. The competition at many of WCOOP events is probably as tough as, if not tougher than those of the WSOP. Winning a $215 WCOOP event might be just as hard as winning a $1k WSOP event. Sooner or later winning a WCOOP bracelet will be in every poker player's dream just as much as securing a WSOP bracelet.

See you at the cyber felt at Pokerstars.eu and good luck in chasing the WCOOP dream!

For the past few weeks, my focus has been on getting ready for the games. The PokerStars WCOOP is a great series of tournaments to play in because it offers every different discipline. You'll have the ability to play all variations of poker during the three weeks. If no limit is not your game, don't stress, stud might be.

Over the past couple of days, I have been playing more mixed games to sharpen my skills and enhance my play. I will be playing in a bunch of events in the WCOOP. My strategy is to get as many mixed games under my belt before September 5th. PokerStars.eu spreads an eight game mix and is a great place to go to get in some practice.

In addition to playing online I am updating my poker station to include two monitors and a new chair. Having a functional and comfortable station is really important for the WCOOP
because some of the tournaments will have extended blind structures and larger fields which could have you playing for up to 24 hours straight!

If you plan on winning, like I do, start banking some sleep hours, and try to prepare some healthy meals ahead of time. I use a meal delivery service in Los Angeles called NUTRIFIT to keep me playing strong. They offer a variety of pre-made healthy meals that are delivered right to your front door. While playing tournaments, you will want to avoid things like: caffeine, alcohol and refined sugars that will cause you to crash and burn.

Even if you are not able to find a meal service plan, it's always a great idea to have some healthy foods on hand. Snacking is a great way to keep your energy level up. Another important thing to do is to include protein in all of your meals because it takes more time to digest and will keep you feeling full longer. Some of my favorites snack options are nuts and fruits, celery and peanut butter, hummus and veggies, and oatmeal with shaved
almonds and bananas.

Keep your brain sharp by staying hydrated and take full advantage of the five-minute breaks unless you have a laptop!

One last (but definitely not least) tip for all you players out there is to have patience, and enjoy the extended structure and increased game play.

Check out the official WCOOP site to plan your assault on the series. See you online!

I plan on playing all the biggest buy-in WCOOPs, possible, even trying my hand at the $25k heads-up for the first time. I'm very excited for the last few days of events when there is a $2k PLO 6 max, $2k horse, $10k 8 game and the $5k Championship event!

Not only have I never won a WCOOP event, I have never even final tabled one. I think that this is going to be my year. I'm feeling and hoping for a strong showing in this year's WCOOP.

The structures are so great and the variety of tournaments is so amazing, it's such an awesome experience just playing in the WCOOP on Pokerstars.

But this year... I WANT TO WIN!

Visit the official WCOOP site to see how you can take part.

This year's WCOOP has 62 events to choose from, so there is something for everyone. With such good structures and most events having large numbers of satellite qualifiers, how could one resist? I was just looking through the schedule and there are 29 tourneys which I hope to play, I probably won't get to play all of them but anything above 20 would be fine. As always they will be NLHE. I do plan to learn some of the other games but for the moment I'm sticking with NLHE.

I haven't had any success in previous WCOOP's but plan to make amends this year. I wonder who's names will come to mind after this series?

Check the WCOOP site to see how you can qualify for any of the events.

But I'm a patient chap and if I have to wait a little longer, well I can live with that.

I've been grinding the cash tables for the past few months so it will make a nice change to get back into the tournament groove. September 5th isn't that far away and I'll probably
introduce a few evening tournaments to my schedule over the next few weeks to sharpen up in time.

The full WCOOP schedule has been released and I'm really looking forward it; the SCOOP series had buy-ins to suit every pocket and user-friendly start times to suit every location and WCOOP has not disappointed.

That's leaves a few weeks to grind out some entry fees and hopefully a nice boost to the bankroll awaits! You can see how you can qualify over on the WCOOP site.

Good luck during WCOOP!